


Still Breathing

by fromthebeginningthen



Series: I Am to See to it That I Do Not Lose You [1]
Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Everybody Lives, First Kiss, Fix-It, M/M, rated T for the stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23744653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fromthebeginningthen/pseuds/fromthebeginningthen
Summary: Tom Blake gets stabbed, but he survives. This is how Will gets back to him.
Relationships: Tom Blake/William Schofield
Series: I Am to See to it That I Do Not Lose You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877314
Comments: 6
Kudos: 76





	Still Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first entry for this fandom, so it's just something short!

Schofield rushed to fill his helmet with water, but he turned at the sound of Blake shouting.

“No-” Blake stumbled back, away from the German who was wielding a bloody knife. “You bastard!” He yelled before falling over.

Schofield steadied his gun and fired until the soldier was down, faster than he could even process what happened. He dropped his gun and ran over to Blake.

Blake tried pushing himself up, but fell to the ground once more and cried out in pain.

Schofield’s stomach turned at the sight of blood leaking through Blake’s fingers and staining his trousers. He’d been stabbed, Schofield might as well have been stabbed for the way blood drained from his own face at the sight.

His friend- his Blake.

Blake‘s eyes met his, panicked. So panicked. Schofield decided it was the worst thing he’s ever seen.

Finally spurred into action by Blake’s cry of “god no,” Schofield dropped to his knees next to him. Schofield pulled out a roll of gauze and pressed them hard against the spot most of the blood was coming through the trousers. It obviously hurt based on the way Blake groaned and laid back. But it wasn’t doing enough, the gauze were stained dark red in less than a minute.

Schofield felt his life slipping through his fingers because only in this moment did he realize exactly how much his grip on sanity in this hell relied on Tom and his god damn stories and his teasing and his rosy cheeks. But his cheeks were pale now.

He cradled Blake’s head from the cold ground and kept his hand on the wound, applying pressure. “We have to go to an aid post.”

Blake groaned, “I can’t walk like this.”

“I’ll carry you, it isn’t very far.” With that, he tried pulling Blake up by his backpack straps and only stopped when Blake yelled and started pounding his fists against Schofield’s chest.

“Please,” he wheezed. “Just bring a doctor here.”

Schofield panicked, “No, you’ll have lost too much blood by then.” Then he tried pulling Blake up again, ignoring his friend’s cries with gritted teeth.

“Oi! What are you doing to that poor man?”

Schofield immediately set Blake down and whipped his head around toward the voice. There were a couple of soldiers, friendlies, approaching them. Towards the farmhouse, he could see some trucks and a captain. He hadn’t heard their arrival since his attention was devoted to helping Blake.

Schofield shouted at the men, “Do you have a medic? He’s been stabbed.”

“Yeah,” one of the men answered. “You’re lucky, one of our convoy is meant to restock an aid post.”

“Well go get him then!” Schofield yelled. They needed to move quickly. The longer they waited, the closer Blake was to...he couldn’t think about it. Not when a spot of hope had taken root in his chest.

In a minute, a couple of stretcher-bearers ran over and Schofield helped move Blake onto the stretcher. He kept pressure on the wound while the other two carried him back to the truck with medical supplies. A medic was already there and ready to work.

He gently moved Schofield’s hands out of the way to assess the damage, then quickly fastened a device around Blake’s thigh, a few inches above the wound. He tightened it, and cinched Blake’s leg and quickly slowed the bleeding.

At the sight, Schofield felt he could finally breathe again and he grasped one of Blake’s hands in his.

“Scho,” came Blake’s tired voice. His face was pinched in pain and he squeezed Schofield’s hand hard where their fingers were tangled together over his chest.

“Scho, you have to continue without me.”

Schofield frowned, “No, I can’t just leave you.”

“You have to, those men are counting on you. I’m counting on you. For my brother.”

When Schofield still didn’t move, Blake said, “look at me.”

So he did, and bless Tom but he was managing to smile right now.

“I’ll be okay if you go. Just tell me you know the way, and we can meet up at the end.”

Schofield nodded and took a few steadying breaths so when he spoke it wouldn’t reveal just how close he was to giving up. Though he suspected Blake could tell.

“I’m going to head southeast until I hit Écoust. I’ll pass through the town and out to the east, all the way to Croisilles Wood. I’ll find the 2nd, I’ll give them the message, and then I’ll find your brother.”

“He looks like me, just a little older.”

Schofield repeated the line back, so Blake would know he got it.

Blake smiled again and loosened his grip from Schofield’s hand. “See? It’s okay now.”

Things were so far from okay, but Schofield nodded and walked away from the truck after one last look into Blake’s tired eyes. He didn’t let himself turn around as he walked away, because he was afraid he would change his mind and throw himself at the foot of the truck if he did.

If he kept telling himself he would meet up with Blake at the end, then he could convince himself to keep moving. And keep moving he did.

Schofield travelled briefly in a truck filled with other soldiers toward the front of the convoy. He split off from them when they reached a bridge at Écoust that had been demolished. The convoy would have to travel further to go around the town. 

Feeling anxious, he checked to make sure Blake was still alive before he left. Blake was alive but had passed out from the shock of it all and a generous dose of morphine. The medic seemed competent enough so Schofield exchanged a nod with him before leaving.

As the sound of the trucks faded into the distance, Schofield was left with an overwhelming silence. He was all at once alone and surrounded by potential enemy soldiers. With only one pair of eyes scanning the path ahead, he needed to be extra cautious.

He crossed the broken bridge by carefully walking along the railing. The silence and his concentration were broken by the piercing sound of metal on metal. A sniper.

It was only the first of many bullets he would encounter in Écoust.

But he drove himself forward with thoughts of Blake. Of getting back to him, of getting to turn the delivery of their orders into just another story told while shivering close together in the trenches. These thoughts marched his feet along like a drum pounding away. He felt the rhythm in his beating heart. 

Forward he went, after waking up from a nasty concussion. Forward through gunfire in the night, his path only lit by flares which cast the shell of a town in otherworldly shadows. Forward through the river, which he was certain he was going to drown in.

When he lost his rhythm, the appearance of white petals floating along the river’s surface pulled him back.

He followed the siren call of a soldier singing to his fellow men. Schofield slumped against a tree and thought to himself that he was the wayfaring stranger in this song.

The song’s end and the soldiers rising around him jerked him back to his mission. They were the 2nd Devons, he learned.

So he began walking again. Running. He couldn’t stop, not when every god damn person kept telling him “just further down” to Colonel Mackenzie.

To his horror, the first wave of soldiers charged over the trenches and towards their deaths. The deaths he was meant to stop. In a last push for reaching the Colonel before it was too late, he threw himself over the trench and charged across the frontline the three hundred or so yards to where the Colonel was stationed.

Once there, he delivered the message at any cost, even punching a superior to get through. The message was received with less than a thank you.

Finally, he marched back through the trenches and to the triage area, looking for Lieutenant Blake. Telling him what happened to the younger Blake was hard. But not harder than it would have been to say Tom had died.

The lieutenant gave orders for Schofield to rest and eat with the 2nd until he felt able to begin travel again. Not to travel back to the 8th, though. To travel to the aid post and find his brother. Schofield planned on doing that anyway, but he was glad he wasn’t going to get in trouble doing it.

This time Schofield’s journey was thankfully eventless. His head throbbed, his muscles ached, and his hand itched with the beginning of infection. But he saw an old manor house and a collection of canvas tents at the bottom of the hill he’d just walked over.

As he approached he could see that this was more of a small hospital than a simple aid post. Soldiers with more life-threatening injuries were probably sent here to be treated inside the safety of the building. Outside were stretchers lined up under the tents, with injured soldiers filling them and groaning in pain or sleeping.

Schofield walked up to one of the medics who was wrapping fresh gauze around someone’s arm. “I’m here to locate a soldier, a Lance Corporal Thomas Blake?”

The medic didn’t pause in his work. “We keep a patient list inside, speak to one of the nurses.”

So he entered the house and saw that it had been turned into a makeshift hospital, as he assumed. Shelves filled with medical supplies lined the foyer, as well as some occupied beds. One of the nurses he spotted was folding fresh linens from a basket.

He approached her and wrung his hands together. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for a specific soldier.”

The nurse took in his weathered appearance then put the sheet that was in her hands down with a sigh. She moved towards a table in the center of the room and grabbed a folder that was sitting on top. “Name?”

“Thomas Blake. He’s a Lance Corporal, he should have arrived yesterday with a stab wound to the leg.”

She looked through the records and it only took a minute for her to make a sound of affirmation. “He’s from the 8th?”

“Yes ma’am,” Schofield nodded.

Her brows furrowed, “How did he end up all the way out here?”

“It’s a long story, but please. I need to see him.”

She must have seen the depth of that statement in his face because she didn’t press the matter. “He should be on the top floor, room three.”

Schofield began walking before her sentence even finished. He called a “thank you” over his shoulder and took the stairs quickly. He kept close to the wall upstairs so a couple nurses could pass him. Then finally he came to a door with a number three painted on its surface.

He took a few breaths to steady his breathing, afraid that the universe was cruel enough to make Blake perish right before he got there. It was a pointless attempt though, and he entered the room, immediately scanning the faces on each bed.

“Scho?”

Schofield spun around and spotted Blake in a bed near the door he’d just entered through. Blake looked confused, but he was smiling too. Obviously happy to see his friend.

Schofield felt himself finally able to breathe again. It was like his lungs hadn’t worked properly since they separated and now he could take full breaths.

He stumbled forward and leaned down to pull Blake up into a hug before he could think twice about it. He needed to feel him solid and warm and alive. He pressed his face into the place where Blake’s shoulder and neck meet and just breathed.

Schofield felt Blake’s arms worm their way around his back and hold him close. The reciprocation made his eyes burn and he leaned back to look into those blue eyes before his vision was completely clouded with tears.

Schofield placed a hand against the side of Blake’s head and rubbed his thumb along the rosy part of his cheek. The color returning to those cheeks was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

He cleared his throat, “Never do that again.”

Blake huffed out a laugh. “Get stabbed? Yeah I don’t reckon I’ll go for round two.” His face sobered a bit at the reminder of how close he’d come to death.

“You don’t understand. Tom, if you died I would-” His voice broke off.

“Would have what?” Blake whispered.

“I would have died too.”

Blake closed his eyes tight and put a hand over top of Schofield’s, to keep it tight to his face.

In the shared breath between them, Schofield lost whatever restraint he still had regarding his feelings for this man. He closed the remaining distance and pressed a kiss to Blake’s lips.

He lingered, and after a couple seconds, Blake whimpered and pressed back. Blake deepened the kiss and it felt natural. Like it was simply the continuation of the relationship they built up fighting alongside each other in the trenches.

Schofield pulled back after one last press of lips and the two smiled at each other.

They knew they couldn’t have much of this when other people were around. But right now, in this space where the wounded were sleeping and there was the slightest semblance of privacy, they could have each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I /know/ their reunion was really short, but I had to stop there at the risk of accidentally doubling the length of this one shot.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! If you ever wanna talk to me about Blakefield you can catch me on twitter at [LCpl_blakefield](https://twitter.com/LCpl_blakefield)! (Seriously come scream at me, I'm very new and looking for other people in this fandom)


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